Have Map, Will Wander

By Paul Weideman, The Santa Fe New Mexican

Jul. 25–Cassandra Wilson is one of the few jazz musicians who gets away with straying beyond the limits of her native genre. The Mississippi-born singer enjoys a reputation as one of America’s pre-eminent jazz singers and has often demonstrated an original voice on chestnutty standards, but she has also covered songs from the funk, blues, folk, rock, and hip-hop realms.

“In Jackson, my hometown, musicians are exposed to the confluence of American musical genres, e.g., jazz, blues, country, R & B, funk, soul, and rock,” she said in a recent e-mail interview. “Jazz is the discipline and core that enables me to navigate a variety of musical situations quickly and confidently.”

Her interview responses, made on the road between Spain and France, were concise. One was about the various audiences she encounters as she tours the world. “Each audience is unique. European audiences tend to have a broader appreciation for jazz. Perhaps this is because they place great emphasis on the arts,” she said. “The audience plays an integral part in the performance. Energy is exchanged.”

Wilson plays the Lensic Performing Arts Center on Friday, July 26, as part of the New Mexico Jazz Festival. She was last in our area in February 2004, when she did two shows at Albuquerque’s Outpost Performance Space and one at the Lensic. Her bandmates were drummer Teri Lynn Carrington, harmonica player Gregoire Maret, guitarist Brandon Ross, bassist Reginald Veal, and percussionist Jeff Haynes. On July 26 she again brings a group of five: Veal, guitarist Marvin Sewell, drummer Herlin Riley, percussionist Lekan Babalola, and pianist Jonathan Batiste.

She says there will be no digital instrumentation onstage — nothing like the samples, hip-hop beats, and drum loops she used on her 2006 album Thunderbird with the help of producer T-Bone Burnett, keyboardist Keith Ciancia, and programmer Mike Elizondo.

Wilson returned to a more traditional jazz setting on her newest release, Loverly. She focuses mostly on standards, although her approach is so fresh and her voice so personal and tantalizingly rich that it’s as if these are all brand-new songs. It sounds like she really loves the music, and, as always, she exults in performing with top musicians.

What about the push and pull between written music and improvisation? “Written music is a road map,” she replied. “Improvisation allows the player to express his or her individual perspective of the journey.”

Wilson never took singing lessons, but she grew up in an environment filled with music. After she sang “Jesus Loves Me” with her kindergarten class, her mother told her she was much louder than everyone else — so loud that it embarrassed her parents in the audience. By the time she was 6 or 7, she was taking part in little competitions with her friends to see who could invent the best song.

Her musical foundation also includes 13 years of piano lessons and a stint on the clarinet in junior-high concert and marching bands. When Wilson was in her late teens and early 20s, she performed in a funk band and in an all-girl band and sang Joni Mitchell songs, accompanying herself on an acoustic guitar.

In the early 1980s, Wilson moved from her native Mississippi to New Orleans and then to New Jersey. Among her musical collaborators during these years were veteran pianist Ellis Marsalis, bassist Dave Holland, and saxophonist Steve Coleman, in whose M-Base Collective she was active for eight years. She recorded Point of View, her debut as a leader, in 1985.

Her relationship with Blue Note Records began in 1993, with the label’s release of Blue Light ‘Til Dawn. On the eclectic set, she sings Mitchell’s “Black Crow,” Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey,” and two songs by blues legend Robert Johnson as well as standards and her own compositions. Her next disc, New Moon Daughter (1995), features covers of U2, Son House, Hank Williams, Neil Young, and even The Monkees — and she won a Grammy for it.

In a 2004 interview, Wilson told Pasatiempo that “the whole thing about getting inside of a song, not just going with the definitive version of the song,” relates directly back to her experience with the M-Base Collective. “I look at that as a pivotal point in my life. I learned so much from being in that group of musicians [among them Carrington, Geri Allen, Ravi Coltrane, Robin Eubanks, and Branford Marsalis], and it was such a wonderful time here in New York City; it was wonderful learning and growing and sharing with my fellow musicians.”

Wilson broadened her field of endeavors eight years ago with the establishment of the Ojah Media Group in Mississippi. It offers recordings by Babalola and singer Rhonda Richmond as well as artworks and clothing. According to Wilson’s Web site, it is “dedicated to documenting and marketing the unique sounds emanating from Mississippi’s fertile soil, and its multi-cultural influences.” In the future, the group plans to release songs from Wilson’s pre-Blue Note career and an album of music by bassist Lonnie Plaxico, who has contributed on nine of Wilson’s recordings.

For Loverly, her 16th album, Wilson brought in Plaxico, Riley, Babalola, and other musician friends to share food, hang out, and make music in a rented house in Jackson. Wilson trains her glorious cords on standards including “Lover Come Back to Me,”"Caravan,” and “A Sleepin’ Bee” plus an original group composition called “Arere.” Her multihued vocals are front and center, but the subtlety of her interactions with the band is riveting.

Wilson told Pasatiempo she strives for a subtle balance between technique and intuition. “Intuition is key!” she said. “It is a higher form of intelligence and far more useful than rational thought when creating music.”

details

Cassandra Wilson

7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 26

Lensic Performing Arts Center,

211 W. San Francisco St.

$25-60; 988-1234

Comments are Temporarily Down

—–

To see more of The Santa Fe New Mexican, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.santafenewmexican.com/.

Copyright (c) 2008, The Santa Fe New Mexican

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.